The present invention relates to a platen and a liquid ejecting apparatus having the same.
The liquid ejecting apparatus referred to herein means not only a recording apparatus, such as a printer, a copying machine, or a facsimile machine, which uses an ink-jet type recording head and performs recording on a recording medium by ejecting ink from the recording head, but also an apparatus in which, instead of the ink, a liquid corresponding to its application is ejected from a liquid ejecting head corresponding to the ink-jet type recording head onto a target medium corresponding to the recording medium, so as to allow the liquid to attach to the target medium.
As the liquid ejecting heads include, it is possible to cite, in addition to the recording head, a colorant ejecting head used in the manufacture of a color filter such as a liquid-crystal display, an electrode material (electroconductive paste) ejecting head used in the formation of electrodes for an organic EL display and a field emission display (FED), a bioorganic compound ejecting head used in the manufacture of a biochip, a sample ejecting head as a precision pipette, and so on.
Hereafter, the ink jet printer as one example of the liquid ejecting apparatus will be described. In recent years, ink jet printers have come to be generally widespread whereby super-high image quality printing which is on par with that of silver halide photography is easily realizable at homes, just as is called home DPE. Among such ink jet printers, there are those which are configured to be able to execute so-called marginless printing in which printing is also effected at the four sides of printing sheet without margins so as to obtain an output result equivalent to that of silver halide photography.
As the construction of such an ink jet printer, a generally adopted construction is such that recessed portions are provided in a platen provided so as to oppose the ink jet recording head and defining the distance between the printing sheet and the ink jet recording head, ink is ejected to regions offset from sheet end portions, and the ink ejected to the offset regions is discarded to the aforementioned recessed portions.
In addition, an ink absorbing material for absorbing the ink is provided in the recessed portions to prevent as practically as possible the floating of an ink mist due to the atomization of the ink which is discarded, and hole portions for ejecting the absorbed ink to below are formed in its bottom. Further, a construction is adopted in which the ink absorbed by the ink absorbing material is allowed to drop from the hole portions to a waste liquid collecting means (e.g., a waste liquid tray) provided below the platen (e.g., refer to Japanese Patent Publication No. 2002-86757A).
When the carriage with the recording head mounted thereon starts to move from a standstill state, there are cases where, in conjunction with this operation, a negative pressure is temporarily applied to the place where the cartridge was at a standstill.
If the above-described hole portions for ejecting the ink to outside are provided in the bottoms of the recessed portions formed in the platen, there occurs the flow of air which penetrates the platen upwardly from below owing to the occurrence of the aforementioned negative pressure. Due to such flow of air, the ink mist floating over the platen is scattered more extensively, so that there is a possibility that the interior of the apparatus is fouled, exerting an adverse effect on the constituent elements.